According to news reports from around the world, two top jihadists are now in custody. Such news should be the cause for celebration by the United States and the rest of the Free World. The Obama administration, however, is likely instead to see them as inconvenient.
News of the first apprehension actually broke weeks ago at our sister site, BigGovernment.com, thanks to intrepid reporting by contributor and best-selling author Brad Thor. The Chinese news service Xinhua yesterday confirmed Thor’s revelation: “An Afghan popular television channel Tolo, citing Pakistani media, reported Tuesday that Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar has been arrested in Pakistan. Tolo also showed a picture of the one-eyed Mullah Omar without giving more details.”
The second arrest took place closer to home when Mexican authorities arrested a senior operative of the Lebanese terrorist group, Hezbollah, named Jameel Nasr. The story was first broken Tuesday by the Kuwaiti daily Al-Seyassah, which — in the words of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz – credited Mexico with “foil[ing] an attempt by Hezbollah to establish a network in South America.”
The report goes on to say that, “Hezbollah operatives employed Mexicans nationals with family ties to Lebanon to set up the network, designed to target Israel and the West….Police say Nasr also made frequent trips to other countries in Latin America, including a two-month stay in Venezuela in the summer of 2008.”
For Team Obama, such arrests could prove awkward, to say the least.
For example, in the case of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, his capture might further complicate already difficult bilateral and multilateral decision-making about the future of Afghanistan. Omar was, after all, a creature of Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI. Reading the Obama administration as irresolute and preparing to bail out on Afghanistan, the Pakistanis are once again seeking to exercise influence (if not actually to dictate) their neighbors’ internal affairs. Among other gambits, they are reportedly facilitating meetings between Afghan President Hamid Kharzai and some of the most dangerous of the Taliban, including representatives of the toxic Haqqani network.
Not only will Mullah Omar’s detention in Pakistan likely give Islamabad new cards to play in shaping a post-U.S. Afghanistan. It will also enable the ISI to use its control over him and, presumably, its exclusive access to the results of any interrogation to which he may be subjected, to advantage in its efforts to extract more financial and political concessions and more military aid from the Americans.
Those in Washington writing the checks and approving the assistance are likely to come under pressure, though, to have direct and unfettered access to the man responsible for providing al Qaeda the safe haven and support that enabled the 9/11 attacks. Either way, it’s a problem. On the one hand, we would be foolish to rely exclusively on whatever Pakistani authorities wish to tell us about Omar’s debriefing. And, on the other, if we got direct access to Omar, what he might tell us about Pakistan’s longstanding and continuing double game – serving at a considerable price as our ally while supporting our Taliban enemies in Afghanistan – would be valuable to know, but would further exacerbate bilateral ties with Islamabad.
At least as unwelcome for the Obama folks must be the proof that Iran’s most dangerous terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, is operating with impunity in Latin America. The capture of Nasr comes as the President tells Senator Jon Kyl that the border must remain insecure until he gets a deal from congressional opponents of an amnesty for the many millions of illegal aliens already in this country.
The Nasr arrest also was revealed at the very moment the Department of Justice announced that the federal government was going to sue to prevent Arizona from enforcing federal laws on immigration. If anything, Arizona’s already popular initiative will seem even more necessary as Americans wake to the prospect that we not only have millions more in Mexico and beyond seeking illegally to gain employment in this country. Our countrymen now have to confront the reality that Nasr was not the only one seeking violently to impose on us the theo-political-military-legal code authoritative Islam calls Shariah who is busily organizing and recruiting next door.
The fact that Hezbollah, together with Iran and another of its terrorist clients, Hamas, are actively seeking to convert Hispanics in Latin America greatly compounds the job of identifying violent jihadists and keeping them out of our country. That job is challenging enough as it is, given the porousness of our borders and the ease with which smugglers can, and do, move people and materiel across them.
The only possible good news for the Obama administration is that the one man who may be able to contort these serious setbacks into happy news for the President is his Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor, John Brennan. After all, Brennan has relentlessly argued for reaching out to and otherwise engaging the “moderates” among the Taliban and Hezbollah. And since both Mullah Omar and Jameel Nasr agree with this eminent authority on the Muslim world that “jihad is a legitimate tenet of Islam,” how long can it be before we are told these are people with whom we can do business?
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